Yesterday I lost a tennis match I should have won.
I won the first set 6-0. Had match point in the tiebreaker. Saved his match point. Had my own. Lost it. And then finally lost the match.
I embraced my opponent at the net. He played a great comeback. He earned it.
I was disappointed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. But here’s what I noticed: I didn’t need that outcome to validate who I am.
The match didn’t define me before I played it. Why would it define me after?
This morning he came over to me at my courts — he was watching his son play a tournament. Warm hello. Brief visit. Genuine.
That exchange wouldn’t have happened if I’d carried the loss to the net the night before. People feel the difference between someone who loses gracefully and someone who just endures it. He felt it. That’s why he walked over.
After the tennis match I went straight to a flag football game. Torched. Already had deep in a grueling singles match. No excuse not to show up.
I had one of my top three games of the season. A key sack as a pass rusher to push them out of scoring territory. A leaping, adjusting touchdown catch to tie the game in the second half. No substitutions. Full game. We won 28-20.
Two arenas. One loss. One win. The same person showed up to both.
Here’s what I’ve been learning — slowly, and the expensive way:
You can’t always control the outcome. What you can control is how you show up and how you receive whatever happens.
When the result doesn’t go your way, you get a choice. You can let it tell you something about your worth, your ceiling, your future. Or you can own who you were in that moment, give credit where it was earned, and walk away without needing the scoreboard to validate you.
The scoreboard is the last thing that matters.
Who you are when it goes against you — that’s the whole thing.
I’ve been through seasons where the scoreboard was devastating. Not a tennis match — a diagnosis. Not a game — a relationship ending at the worst possible moment. Not a loss — a full-on collapse of the life I’d been building.
The same principle applied. I didn’t always get it right. But the version of me that showed up to that football field yesterday — torched, disappointed, no subs — that version was built in those seasons.
You don’t get to own who you are after a hard thing unless you do the work during it.
The result is just data.
The way you carry it tells the real story.
Just. Keep. Moving.